And then she stopped thinking with her head and let her body take over. Wolf muscle drove her forward and up into a leap, water droplets flying from her mane, her eyes fixed on Cruces' neck.
The gonne fired, four times. It didn't miss once.
She hit the man heavily, knocking him backwards.
Vimes rose in an explosion of spray.
'Six shots! That's six shots, you bastard! I've got you now!'
Cruces turned as Vimes waded towards him, and scurried towards a tunnel, throwing up more spray.
Vimes snatched the bow from Carrot, aimed desperately and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
'Carrot! You idiot! You never cocked the damn thing!'
Vimes turned.
'Come on, man! We can't let him get away!'
'It's Angua, captain.'
'What?'
'She's dead!'
'Carrot! Listen. Can you find the way out in this stuff? No! So come with me!'
'I . . . can't leave her here. I—'
'Corporal Carrot! Follow me!'
Vimes half ran, half waded through the rising water towards the tunnel that had swallowed Cruces. It was up a slope; he could feel the water dropping as he ran.
Never give the quarry time to rest. He'd learned that on his first day in the Watch. If you had to chase, then stay with it. Give the pursued time to stop and think and you'd go round a corner to find a sock full of sand coming the other way.
The walls and ceiling were closing in.
There were other tunnels here. Carrot had been right. Hundreds of people must have worked for years to build this. What Ankh-Morpork was built on was Ankh-Morpork.
Vimes stopped.
There was no sound of splashing, and tunnel mouths all around.
Then there was a flash of light, up a side tunnel.
Vimes scrambled towards it, and saw a pair of legs in a shaft of light from an open trapdoor.
He launched himself at them, and caught a boot just as it was disappearing into the room above. It kicked at him, and he heard Cruces hit the floor.
Vimes grabbed the edge of the hatchway and struggled through it.
This wasn't a tunnel. It looked like a cellar. He slipped on mud and hit a wall clammy with slime. What was Ankh-Morpork built on? Right. . .
Cruces was only a few yards away, scrambling and slipping up a flight of steps. There had been a door at the top but it had long ago rotted.
There were more steps, and more rooms. Fire and flood, flood and rebuilding. Rooms had become cellars, cellars had become foundations. It wasn't an elegant pursuit; both men slithered and fell, clambered up again, fought their way through hanging curtains of slime. Cruces had left candles here and there. They gave just enough light to make Vimes wish they didn't.
And then there was dry stone underfoot and this wasn't a door, but a hole knocked through a wall. And there were barrels, and sticks of furniture, ancient stuff that had been locked up and forgotten.